August-September 20th

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After doing the seminar for Wilderness Odyssey in May I had been seriously considering working there. I was excited because there were other activities other than just hiking and the students were a lot closer to my socio-economic background than the kids in Idaho. The part that had me worried was that the kids at Wilderness Odyssey were mostly going to be adjudicated, which means they're in the court system. To add to my fears I had heard that the first group that came through Wilderness Odyssey had hit the new instructors pretty hard. I was experienced by then, but word from another experienced instructor that worked the first group was that it was a "shit-storm"

To top it off my last trip at SUWS was going to be a week, then over two days off I would drive to New Mexico to go on a two week trip. I was excited because this was the last two weeks of the current group's expedition. The groups come to WO for 42 days, six weeks, and I got the last two. This eased my apprehension a bit because by the 5th week they should be a pretty solid group. On top of that I knew we weren't going to be hiking much because the last two weeks of the group were supposed to be rappelling, climbing, caving, doing community service.

I met the group near the top of a small mountain range called the Capitans. The Capitans are one of the few mountain ranges that run East to West in the US. When I met the guys they were picking raspberries near camp. It wasn't muddy, but it was definitely wet in the mountains.

During the beginning of August New Mexico was hit by a massive storm that was the result of a hurricane that hit the coast of Texas on a North Westerly course. Apparently the boys were in the thick of it while on the mountain. Ruidoso, the town most of the Wilderness Odyssey staff lived in was hit hard, several bridges were washed away and massive flood damage was cause along the banks of the Ruidoso river and surrounding areas.

It rained pretty good on us for the first few days. This group had a cohesion I had never seen before, but they also still had quite a lot to work on individually. I found out that several of the boys had known each other previously since they were mostly from Corpus Christi, TX. In fact two of them had been in the same gang, one of which was trying to get out of the gang.

The other gang member had been a leader in the gang at home (his father was the founder) an d so he was pretty much the leader of the group. He was a charismatic kid when he wanted to be…for good or ill. When he didn't want to do something it often became a power struggle, but I think Kyle (my co-instructor) and I did a good job of containing those.

We only hiked for a couple of days then we rappelled and climbed near Capitan Gap for a few more days. The boys really liked climbing and rappelling and Kyle and I even got a few climbs and rappells in by ourselves when Seaver was in the field.

After the climbing and rappelling we went to Fort Stockton cave. This is a pretty cool that's still being explored and new discoveries are constantly being made. Fort Stockton cave has the privilege of having the worlds larges cave structure in it. There's a part called The Snowy River which is a flowstone that looks like snow, apparently it flows for a couple of miles underground. Since we were with the kids we weren't able to go down there, but it's definitely something I plan to see before I leave New Mexico.

One of the kids struggled with the dark and the somewhat cramped conditions (at one point you have to crawl on your hands and knees for a few hundred yards). Most of the cave is pretty open though and you can walk with no problems. There are a few beautiful formations, one of which you can see when you're in the crawl. There are crystals that grow from the ground up to 3 inches in length that look like grass all along the floor of the cave. I've never seen anything like it, they were beautiful. Unfortunately my camera was having issues and just starting to die on me…so I was only able to get a few blurry pictures.

After the caving we began the community portion of the program, where we serve the community in some way. As I mentioned before, Ruidoso was hit pretty hard during a storm and some of the options for us were helping move an elderly lady who's house was flooded, dig out some trails that got flooded, or help dig out a trailer park along the banks of the Ruidoso river.

It turned out that we were going to dig out the trailer park. We spent the whole day digging and digging and clearing out dirt and mud from around the base of the trailer homes. There were some places where the dirt was 3-4 feet up the side of the trailers. It was pretty back breaking work, but it definitely felt good to help people out.

At one point an older native american man came out of his trailer to thank us. He said he had recently injured his back and couldn't dig himself out. He thanked us and I, along with the boys, felt the gratitude and to me it made it all worth it.

Once the community portion was completed we returned to our property in Timberon, NM to finish up the last few days of the program. This included a Vigil Quest, a solo, planning graduation, and graduation.

The Vigil Quest is a ceremony overseen by a local medicine man named Medicine Wolf. The quest starts with a pipe ceremony. Medicine Wolf talked about what was going to happen throughout the Vigil Quest, thoughts the kids might have, things they may see, and how they were to communicate with us. After the pipe ceremony we took the kids to individual sites, by trees so they could sit up. The idea of the Vigil Quest was to stay up all night. To keep themselves awake the boys were to make knots in grass or anything else they could do.

This group wasn't really too into except one kid (who was on sleep meds but managed to stay up the longest). Myself, Kyle, and Medicine Wolf spent most of the night walking around and waking them up. However; that ended up being good for us because we got to talk to Medicine Wolf a lot and listen to his wisdom and stories. In the middle of the night it started raining, we woke the boys and had them make quick shelters and just let them sleep through the rain. We ended up staying up until about 3am.

In the morning we woke up the kids and officially ended the Vigil Quest with another Pipe Ceremony in which the kids talked about what they thought about and what they saw during the night. Part of the Pipe Ceremony was also a naming ceremony in which Medicine Wolf gave each of the students a native name depending on their personality. During the ceremony one of the kids asked if we (Kyle and I) had names too, so Medicine Wolf named us as well. Kyle's was named Pathfinder and I was given the moniker of Mountain Seer.

Over the next two days the kids' parents/guardians/PO's, etc, showed up and the kids demonstrated the skills they learned while they were in the program. They showed bowdrilling, trap making, wilderness first aid, conflict lines (a form of conflict resolution), shelter making, etc. The boys really shined and we had a great send off, despite the rain.

The day after graduation when everyone left Kyle and I were left to clean up camp and it was a job…there were several tents we had to pick up and organize all of the miscellaneous gear that parents and students had borrowed and returned. It had just been raining and the property is pretty remote and has 4wd only roads, which are difficult to navigate when they're dry let alone when it had been raining on and off for several days.

Being in the rain for almost two weeks didn't really agree with me and while I was staying at a hostel I got very sick. I was the first time I had been really sick in over a year and I was thankful I was at a hostel and could just chill for several days until the next group came in. I basically sat and watched the first 4 seasons of Weeds while I recovered.

After a week of being sick I felt better just in time to get ready for the next group. My partner this time was Mich, an instructor that worked in Idaho with me, although we had never actually worked together. She was just as experienced as I was so these two weeks were much easier on me, since I didn't feel like I was doing everything. Kyle was a great co-instructor but he was still new so Mich's experience was very welcome.

This next group of kids was a lot easier than the previous group, almost a cake walk in fact. These kids weren't as hardcore as the previous group. None of them were in gangs and they were there for things like tagging and stealing cars. We also had two girls in the group, which calms down the aggressiveness quite a bit. The two weeks pretty much flew by as we trained the kids to build shelters, spark fires, and taught them how to pack their packs and hike. We hike around the Capitan Mountains and on the North Side of the range it was amazingly lush. I felt like we were in Oregon or Washington rather than New Mexico, there were ferns everywhere.

I don't have any pictures from this trip because my camera completely died and was useless.

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Photos

Instructors
Seaver and Kyle, two of the guys I work with

In the cave
A little blurry because my camera was dying

Cavers
This is a pic from a small cliff, everyone had already climbed down.